Location: Silverlake, Los Angeles 
Type: Single Family
Design Team: Katy Barkan, Hannah Hortick, Laura Grombone
Date: 2025

Big Small House is a small house that is trying to look big. Limited by ADU maximums of 1200 sf, this primary residence for a family of 3 claims large areas of exterior space as functional programmed zones under an open roof. Working within tight constraints–and an even tighter budget–the project aims to make outsized effects from simple things. To achieve this openness and economy, the design makes use of thin perforated metal sheeting, allowing the roof and balcony guardrail to appear paper thin. The lenticular effect of the material makes the form appear solid from afar and porous on approach, lending both mass and levity to an otherwise modest and straightforward form. 

Beginning with an existing 500 sf shed the staggered addition produces 3 exterior typologies: an entry courtyard, a private walled garden, and a deep porch. Each of these serve to extend the modest spaces within and provide paired exterior rooms. The circulatory armature of the house is conceived strategically as a 3ft gap between the existing and new structure to leave the existing foundations undisturbed. Within this gap a double height slot for the stair and corridor provides light and connection between old and new, down and up. 

In all, the big-small house extends research into the alignments and misalignments of the interior and exterior of architecture to produce effects that exceed the limits of the tightly regulated envelope.